So, last Sunday, February 26, Rev. Kent gave a sermon on moving from Impatience to Patience. At the end of the sermon, he challenged us to find a way to practice patience this week. For those of you who do not know me so well, I am a pretty patient person. However, one of my biggest challenges for patience is when I am driving. I decided this is where I would work on my patience.
Yesterday, I decided to practice patience while driving. I decided I would not pass anyone all day long. Knowing my propensity to be a little aggressive while driving, I thought this would be a great way for me to practice. My concern was that I would be aggravated, angry, and edgy all day long as I applied this practice. To my amazement, there was this sense of freedom the longer I applied patience to my driving. I relaxed, I enjoyed driving, no one bothered me with the way they were driving. It was a very good day. At least until about 5:30 p.m.
I needed to go to PetCo to get some dog food, and a couple of other things. I headed that way, and had no problem until I was literally 100 yards from the entrance. I was following a city bus, and it had to stop right before my turn to let some people off the bus, no problem, I'm being patient and waiting. Well, being right behind the bus also put me about 5 feet past the WalMart exit, and as always, people were waiting to exit. I had a dilemma, do I pass the bus, thus forgoing my practice, or do I wait patiently? It had been about 30 seconds now, and the bus wasn't moving. People exiting were honking as they went around me. I decided for this time, I was just going to wait, maybe some other people can practice patience as well. I don't know if it counts if you force people to practice patients, but that's another day.
After about a minute and a half, the bus driver got out of the bus and came back to check on me. He asked, "are you ok?" I'm fine I said, I'll just wait for you to go on with the rest of your route. "It's going to be a couple more minutes" he said. That's fine, I'll wait, I'm practicing patience I said. He looked at me quizzically and said "you're what?" I went on to explain to him about church and Rev. Kent's challenge. He shook his head, gave me a big smile and said "I may just have to check that church out." We'd love to have you, I said and he went on his way.
It's amazing what can happen when we least expect it. What I thought was going to be a miserable day, turned into a great day and a chance to share a little bit of my faith with someone else. I had fun practicing patience and I know that it will continue to be a practice for me when I'm driving.
I hope that you can find some time in your life as well to practice a little patience. May it be so.
